SPOTIFY CONNECTS THE WORLD
Spotify needed to improve their social side to increase customer engagement and distinguish themselves from other music streaming services.
Despite the fact that Spotify has been redesigned and features has been added to it hundreds of time, I decided to take up the challenge and try come up with a new idea to reinvent universal music sharing.
I worked on this project as a UX / UI Designer.
I was responsible for user research, ideation, wireframing, interaction design, visual design, prototyping and user testing.
I started with secondary research to understand the connection between the enjoyment of music and social interactions. I reviewed insightful studies and collected data that deepens my understanding of the problem space.
The problem was that I didn’t know what the real problem is, so this project was all about design research. I conducted two rounds of interviews. The first one was to understand why Spotify users share music, with whom they share it, why they don’t, and how they discover new music. After that I stepped back, analyzed my findings and tried to identify some problems to explore. I then invited participants for a more in-depth interview to explore the chosen problem.
After deep interviews I had to define the problem. In this case, Spotify doesn’t create a particular frustration when used, which means that the problem isn’t really visible. Therefor, I had to look for opportunities from still unexpressed needs. After the definition of the problem, I let my imagination run wild to generate as many potential solutions as possible. I, then, narrowed them down to the best solution.
Music bring people together. All the participants I’ve interviewed expressed their desire to connect with others in a way or another by sharing music. Sharing music help them express their thoughts and feelings when words fail them, establish social identity, recall shared memories, share new discoveries and discover others’ music taste.
Music is pleasurable, and affect our wellbeing. But many studies also show that music plays a significant role in strengthening social bonds. According to scientific research music Music increases contact, coordination, and cooperation with others, strengthens the skill of empathy and theory of mind that is crucial for everyday human social interactions and increases cultural cohesion.
Friend Activity feature on Spotify allows users to see what their friends are currently listening to or their past listening activy. All the users I’ve interviewed listen to their friends’ music using that feature.
Spotify implemented social features like shared playlist and friend activity to share music with friends and family over the internet. However there are millions of Spotify users out there and millions of songs are being shared everyday but not everybody can take part of it and so making new connections through music becomes more difficult.
What feature I can add to spotify to bring its community together? To come up with a solution, I started by diverging before I converge. I generated as many ideas as possible, including ideas that seem ridiculous, absurd and wild, in a short amount of time and created many variation before I could choose the strongest idea to develop.
I drew a map to show the users around, then I drew the globe and that was my AHA moment. Basically, the solution I came up with is a map where Spotify users around the world would be located. So, at any moment, users can explore the music listening activity anywhere in the world. This way they can discover new music and make new connections.
Spotify users can explore the map to see what people are listening to around the world in real time and learn about new cultures. Kevin, the persona, is going soon to Sao Paolo to take part in an exchange program. He started learning portuguese and uses the Spotify map to discover brazilian culture and what a better way than through music?
I tried to integrate the new feature to the app in a seamless way. I wanted to make sure the feature is in-line with the product and natural to the everyday Spotify users. I designed the flow to show how they can access the map and how the map page is connected to the music player and users profil.
When oppening the map, users will see the planet earth floating in the space with a green halo around representing music echo. This idea came from Google Earth app. Users can navigate up and down , right and left, back and forth in every possible direction to simulate the familiar feeling of a physical globe. With a swipe of their finger they can twist or tilt the globe and spin it around just like they would do with a globe in their living room.
To create this new Spotify map, I combined social mapping that enables users to see where users currently are on a map using GPS with music mapping that will show what song is being played in any location on the map.
A green halo is inlaid into the streets is showing users activity, the intensity of which varies depending on the volume of activity and as we zoom in we can see users represented with little icons with their profil pictures.
To prevent the users from being overwhelmed, I set up filters that will allow them to narrow the results and only surface what is relevant to them according to their current desires.
When tapping on a user icon, the song starts to play in the background and is shown in the « Now Playing bar » to allow users to continue exploring the map and find other songs. They can expand the bar if they want to add the song to the library.
An icon with a profil picture showing who shared the song has been added to the « now playing » screen. If the user likes the song , he might like the profil of the person who shared it. He can tap on the icon and easily access the profil to follow it and make new connections.
Once the Hi-Fi wireframes were ready I recruited users for testing and conducted a usability test to make the last refinment. I collected valuable feedback and made some changes accordingly.
To my surprise, other users unanimously chose the colored profile photos. They believe that users’ pictures make the map vibrant. Skin colors, style of photos, background colors and clothes’ colors join music to make each part of the map unique.
It was hard for to empty my brain from the obvious. I started the ideation process by couple rounds of crazy 8s to come up with as much ideas as possible but I was stuck and couldn’t go beyond the first ideas I came up with. Those ideas seemed to be good but were the obvious ones, probablly the result of all the information I’ve unconsciously absorbed while browsing dribbble, medium and other inspiring websites.
My mentor pushed me to explore other paths and encouraged me to go beyond the « first ideas » even if they make sense and might solve the problem. I came to understand that in order to create something truly impactful I had to go wild and not be afraid to explore paths that others haven’t took.
I initially thought this feature will bring the music community together and help discovering parts of the world through music without leaving the couch. After discussing with users, I realized that its social impact might be more important. A user will not only see what people are listening to around the world, they will also discover by selecting a mood who else in the world is sharing her sadness and will feel less lonely. I think this will really strenghtens the cohesion and creates a sense of togetherness among Spotify community.